Get matched with top paving pros in Derby, VT

"They were absolutely wonderful. Will sure recommend them"

"The company's website says it's BBB accredited and claims it has an A+ rating. The company has an F rating and is not accredited. [*** Link removed ***] Get a contract from this company as the owners make things up after they mess things up and add to their estimate in the middle of a project and it's hit or miss whether the company sends workers who know what they're doing. I hired this contractor for a paving job August 2022. He did a good job, although it ended up $4000 more than the $8000 quote. So I asked him to do another job. He forgot about me and in October 2022 I called to remind him and he promised he'd get a crew there before winter kicked in. The owner sent an employee to do the job. The employee didn't have enough workers, so he brought another worker from the company who was inexperienced and a friend who had never done paving before. The supervisor said he usually wasn't allowed to use the paving machinery. He said the owners operated the big machines, but they had gone to Florida for the winter. (The owner told me at the prior job that he and his wife operated the machinery as they didn't trust the employees to do so.) The supervisor let one of the workers operate the machine to train him and he dumped too much pavement, some on the town sidewalk and to correct it, the workers pushed the pavement toward the center of the driveway and created a hump where the driveway used to be flat. The owner had told me that they would remove gravel before paving, so that the pavement was even with the remaining gravel driveway. The owner said his workers would spread the removed gravel on the remaining gravel section of the drive and regrade it as part of the job The workers merely laid the pavement down on the existing gravel drive without removing any. There is now a hump in the middle of the pavement and a 3 to 4 inch drop to the gravel driveway and the pavement is 3 or 4 inches higher than the lawn and gravel driveway. Potholes have developed where the cars drop down from pavement to gravel. The hump makes the vehicles drop harder. It's bad enough that it could damage struts on a vehicle. Guess I have a free speed hump. :) I called and texted the owner, Mike Hamel, in November 2022 and he said the drop to the gravel driveway is normal. I know it is not as I've had a driveway that was part pavement and gravel before. Also plenty of VT roads go from pavement to gravel and there isn't a 3 or 4 inch different in height and a drop. Owner didn't respond from November 2022 to March 2023. The owner responded to me on March 08, 2023 and said that he had not been checking messages, because he was taking care of some serious issues and says when the snow thawed he intended to come and look at the issue. May. Texted the owner and owner said he was still in Florida and that I was "on his list" when he returned. June 28th. Texted the owner as I hadn't heard from him. Owner wrote that he had looked at it and that it was a little high at the sidewalk but was fine. He said that the only solution was to pave the rest of the drive. Which is not what he told me when I hired him. He is going to do nothing other than let me pay him to correct his mess. I've downloaded photos of his other work from his Facebook page and drives he's done are not raised like mine, the majority being slightly lower than the adjacent lawns or transition to gravel or the street. June 30. Had another driveway guy and a general contractor look at the paving job and both say done wrong and way too high. Unfortunately, no contract but I do have people to testify not done to industry standards, if I should choose to file a small claim or file with the State's Attorney for Consumer Affairs. But the least I can do is to let people know what can happen if they hire this contractor. You may get great work or you may be seriously disappointed. And the owner will justify anything so he does not have to bear the expense to fix something."